Amid cultural folly, Lewis Black is a crazy voice of reason

Sunday

Jan 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJan 29, 2012 at 1:00 AM

Jill Renae Hicks

Lewis Black’s material is so fresh that often he doesn’t know exactly what he’ll say until he’s onstage. The foul-mouthed, crusty comedian, who for years has toured nationally and often relentlessly, also is a regular contributor to the comedy news broadcast “The Daily Show” and has penned two books, appeared in films and written plays. Often compared to George Carlin and other comedic social critics, Black is famous for his heart-palpitating rants about any eligible aspect of U.S. culture, including why people are obese, theories on how to stimulate the economy, the often absurd methods used to teach children, and the political situation at any given moment. When asked about the election year in a recent phone interview, for example, Black had plenty to say, with exclamation marks in tow — a private echo of his tendency to get angrier and angrier, and funnier, in front of a crowd.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Missouri Theatre, 203 S. Ninth St.

Tickets: $41.50 to $61.50

More info: www.concertseries.org

On college students: “You’re raised to live in a time, and by the time you get to that time, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

On cellphone services: “AT&T is a carrier in the same way a mosquito carries malaria.”

On playwriting: “I think playwriting is harder than anything else outside of maybe poetry. It’s like doing some sort of high-fallutin’ math.”

On aging: “You do get more conservative — but you don’t get ing stupid.”

And that tendency works wonders. As his biography notes, he provides a “cathartic release of anger and disillusionment for his audience. Lewis yells so they don’t have to.” Fans who visit Black’s show at the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts on Thursday can expect to be buoyed along by a livid, curse-laden torrent of mutually produced anger and laughter. But show-goers might not want to be caught texting during the performance for fear of being called out on it: One thing Black plans to talk about is how everyone in the country — barring the rare few without a mobile phone or computer — has attention deficit disorder.

Black said the tour and his material evolve as he travels. Up-to-the-minute events often dictate his next diatribe. “It’s been kind of changing nightly as I try to figure it out,” he explained in his gravelly voice, scoured by years of shouting in front of an audience. It’s a necessity for him to keep up with the latest news and political coverage to be able to rage about it, Black said, but not more than absolutely tolerable: “I watch a certain amount of it until it makes me nauseous.” Although that won’t keep him from referencing the Kardashians in his show, he said.

Black has yet to run out of material, which is both good and bad news for Americans. Whatever spouts from his mouth next “depends on what’s in front of me, … but the one thing you can count on is stupidity.” He made no secret about declaring the absurdity of current political campaigns, pointing to them as an abundantly fresh source for his routines. “I’m not making it up. They make it up,” he emphasized. “At this point, I have never seen anything like” the 2012 presidential campaigns, noting that both political sides often talk to themselves instead of talking to the American people.

“It’s like both sides are so crazy that they push me to the middle. … And I don’t want to be there,” he said.

That attention to and humorous bashing of both conservatives and liberals make Black one of the band of brothers — including Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and other “Daily Show” cohorts — who have increasingly functioned as a satirical voice counteracting the extremes of society and politics. “A voice of reason that’s completely crazy,” he added after a beat. Black also has garnered fans from international tours, and although — or perhaps because — the majority of his work lambastes American culture, overseas audiences get it. “You have somebody watching us from the outside, … and those are the countries we’re going to be dealing with,” he said. “Yeah, they’re flipping out.”

Black’s tours have spawned a collection of HBO and Comedy Central specials, a conglomeration of his invited and uninvited opinions. He published a memoir in 2005, “Nothing’s Sacred,” and a more recent tome on his opinions about organized religion, 2008’s “Me of Little Faith.” In addition, he has played primary roles in the 2006 films “Man of the Year” and “Accepted” along with other more minor productions.

Most recently, though, his work outside of stand-up has circled back to playwriting. One of his plays, a romantic farce titled “One Slight Hitch,” will be performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer. Playwriting was what he originally thought he would do, Black said; he studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Yale School of Drama. He initially supposed his playwriting could support his foray into comedy. Years later, it has turned out to be the other way around.

“Live performance is the most fun, I’d have to say,” he remarked of his growing body of work. It’s just him and the audience — which can be a little safer, he said, than arriving on a movie set and finding out the film director is insane. “The only one who can screw up is me. … There’s no filter.”

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